That's the issue here. Believe this or not, the U.S. chamber of commerce is trying to spam this blog with their propaganda. (They hire people, paying peanuts to put corporate agenda comments in blogs).
So, the goal of EP is to not only analyze and get objective here, get into the details, but to also promote policies that are in the national interest, are based in economic realities and don't screw the U.S. middle class or the national interest.
The next leading economic index will increase because of the stock market. So, the impression will be that everything is fine. Dont' worry about regulating anything. Don't worry about the future because as long as the financial sector is strong America is strong. F*ck them!
To me, this is no surprise really. I saw AIG a couple of days ago valued @ 44, and now we have financials which are flush with U.S. taxpayer cash, propping them up, soaring on the market.
Seems since at least the mid 90's, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup has been deciding whatever is in the best interests of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup is what is in the best interests of the nation.
Did you see that reversal on the modest tax code changes?
That was out of Treasury and here we go....can't get a damn thing changed if it's not endorsed and approved by MNCs.
A global financial meltdown bringing the entire world to the bring of ruin, wiping out middle class families losing their homes, their jobs, their savings...
and...it's pretty clear with their lobbyists and corrupt Congress, we get nowhere.
When the Fed said they were going to do something, well, we'll see, usually their are "king financial oligarchy" but to me that shows also just how bad it is....because the Fed can do end runs on U.S. government.
assuredly lends itself to hopefully someone with a real good technique with graphics/photoshop.
I have all sorts of images now of what an Economic Volcano God looks like! Some sort of $$ eyeballs of fire with maybe a Cronos eating his young image.
I couldn't figure out that comment completely either so I shot for the issues I know exist, but just for start-ups.
You'll bypass all of the CAPTCHA and can also more easily track your comments in the "my account section" which lists them and the replies.
Consider EP the "self help" of economic blogs. i.e. we're all grad students on this bus in a way. The point of EP is to give the peanut gallery a voice, for it's usually our pocketbooks that are getting picked.
On the initial unemployment claims vs. losses that difference (I think) is the people who file minus the people who just got a job. So, you can lose a job right, but you can also get a job.
It's only the combination of globalization and entrepreneurship killing taxes and regulation that lead us to our current problems.
So you are saying that after 30 years of massive deregulations and free trade agreements that all our problems are caused by not enough deregulations and free trade agreements?
Tell me something: what does the Volcano God look like?
I think most people do not get that the labor force is a subset of the total population and does "shrink" when people drop out of it, as well as "expands" when there is underground workforce in competition.
People see 10% or whatever and think that's some static #, which is based on some sort of static U.S. total pop....
when it's not, there is a whole series of criteria who is counted in the workforce and that skews the numbers.
They count foreign guest workers in the employment rate yet as far as I know do not count them in the total U.S. work force, which deflates the real unemployment rate for U.S. workers. Where this is prevalent is in tech jobs.
We do NOT have Free Trade. What we have is Lopsided Slanted Stacked Trade.
Per Paul Craig Roberts:
"Labor arbitrage is not trade and does not meet the Ricardian conditions for comparative advantage upon which the case for free trade is based."
"Few economists have bothered to think about the issue of offshoring, preferring to dismiss concerns about it as manifestations of the old protectionist fallacy. They learned in graduate school that free trade is always mutually beneficial and ceased to think when they passed their exams. This is especially true of "free market economists" who believe that economic freedom, which they identify with the freedom of capital, is always good. Thus, most economists mistakenly believe that offshoring is protected under the authority of free trade doctrine.
However, free trade doctrine is based on the assumption that domestic capital seeks its comparative advantage in its home economy, specializing where its comparative advantage is best and, thereby, increasing the general welfare in the home economy. David Ricardo, who explicated the case for free trade, rules out an economy's capital seeking absolute advantage abroad instead of comparative advantage at home."
I'm talking about unleashing the entrepreneurs, although I'll disagree with you on people. They are tons of people out there and maybe one might have to do a little training, ramp up time, but they are fully capable, hard working, dedicated and they need opportunities.
But that's why this post isn't talking about that side of the EQ, because the "other blogger" that being me, just wrote about one idea.
It's the money side as well as the killer of competition side (nice point, this is really true, esp. with IP wars), it's so skewed towards those "with lobbyists" the little guy often doesn't have a prayer unless acquired.
Good example is how the SBA continually awards big MNCs "small business" contracts, yet the little guy simply doesn't have the time/resources to navigate through that maze of bureaucracy to even figure out how to bid on some of those government contracts and if they do bid...uh, how to get paid if they manage to even swim through all of the requirements, paper work.
That's just on one side. VCs want a huge chunk of a business, which is ok, but ya know, not everybody is even at the point of getting to a VC and only certain types of businesses, i.e. startups would they be interested in...
so those little Mom&Pop operations aren't going to get any funds from a VC of course and even when it comes to smaller market share manufacturing, or services, a VC wouldn't be interested in it...
As far as I know there is no "Angel investor" pool out there for those smaller businesses to get off the ground.
But fundamentally I agree with you, we need a MAJOR job creation engine at this point and that's new ventures, so we not only need a good old fashioned jobs program, infrastructure, we need to kick start new businesses.
So, anyone who wants to help out to discuss ideas, some of the problem details in this area, come add your insights...
I see in the statistics they scour the Internets looking for any info at all..
so putting up some technical charts for them, they would love it.
Myself, what you're saying is pretty much what I did. I went for March 2010 options and I have a limit order for when they correct, so I didn't just buy them, I'm looking for that correction dip, assuming it will happen in the next couple of months. But I didn't do a technical chart to figure out the exact price. I guess I should do that instead of sticking my thumb in the air and guessing on the price bottom!
There are all sorts of new businesses and jobs that are impractical because we don't have enough people and/or we don't have enough money. If the entrepreneurs are fully unleashed, you get a lot of new businesses, new jobs absorbing the displaced. But the incumbent firms who would get plowed under by more nimble competitors seek to capture regulatory bodies and pass laws that are a light burden for big firms but killers for their small and medium sized competitors.
It's only the combination of globalization and entrepreneurship killing taxes and regulation that lead us to our current problems. The wealth you make by new companies and new jobs being created is worth the price you pay by opening us up to everybody else's entrepreneurs in my opinion. But ignoring the job creation parts and what we're doing to kill off those new jobs is a problem in this essay.
Right now the short-term technicals for gold and the dollar are at extremes. They point towards an imminent rally in the dollar and drop in gold.
However, the fundamentals, including seasonal factors, are very strong for gold.
If I was to make a guess I would say the coming correction in gold will be mild.
Last night I put in some call options on GLD. So, it's not like I'm not that convinced, although the speculation bets on all things related to physical gold are at an all time high.
"World leaders are acting on threats to dump the dollar while the Obama administration shows a willingness to tolerate a weaker currency in an effort to boost exports......"
What a joke! I love it when the US can't control the fall of its currency so they claim it will help exports. My respnse..."What exports?"
The US exported its manufacturing base since the Reagan years and now has nothing or close to nothing to export. Presently there are only 11 million people in the US out of 300 million who work in manufacturing. The lowest it has ever been.
Maybe if the US had changed to the metric system in the '70s when everyone else in the English speaking world did, they might have industries producing goods the world's people want to buy. Instead they forced American companies to export the job base so they can sell products in the metric world.
Poverty is a terrible price to pay in order to cling to obsolete measurements and standards.
WOW!
What an answer! This is like going to graduate school. Thank you.
I was especially interested in the comparison between the bar chart PAYEMS and the line chart PAYEMS. Recently, I wrote a comment in Bonddad noting that on his stock charts there is no such thing a ‘a’ (single) trend line. Sometimes he has so many trend, base, support, etc. lines that it’s hard to read the raw data. And, that’s what I always appreciated about his analysis – its complexity; not over simplified.
Yet, for some reason on the ‘Green Shoots’ charts there is only one line and always from the trough. Your bar/line chart comparison vividly demonstrates the old saying: “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.”
At the risk of overstaying my welcome (teacher): I still am not clear about what the difference is between “Job Loses” and “First Time Unemployed”. As I understand it, recent Job Loses are in the range of about 250,000 in September. But, First Time Unemployment is in the range of 540,000. What exactly does “job loses” measure?
If you have the time and are of the mind – if not, thank you anyway for your detailed response.
Of course not. If you were then you wouldn't be allowed into the Church of the Volcano God and never be taken seriously in the investment community.
Let's put this another way:
Let's say instead of finding this asset on the periodic table, it was a creation of alchemists on Wall Street.
Somehow they had found a way to make a product that had zero chance of default and had zero risk from currency fluctuations.
This Wall Street product went up every single year and was the top performing investment of the decade.
Even more importantly, it's demand kept increasing as its customer base expanded, while at the same time its supply kept decreasing.
Given all that, do you think for a second that this wouldn't be the hottest product on the market? There would be ad men pitching this product on CNBC around the clock. It would be the main topic of conversation at cocktail parties. Your broker would tell you that you HAD to have some of this in your portfolio.
The problem is that this ISN'T a product of Wall Street. It's a product of nature. And for that reason, and that reason alone, you can't believe in it and still be allowed into the investment club. It would anger the Volcano God.
gives a lot of clarity on the state of the dollar and frankly, makes me think I've been wrong. I have been thinking this is a bunch of "brew ha ha" due to foreign debt holdings.
Seeing all of the recent events together in one piece, well, this is looking bad for dollar hegemony.
On gold, I'm not so convinced, unless I'm wrong and somehow gold is still linked to some currencies in the world.
(although I am in the "it's going to $2k an ounce camp regardless")
That's the issue here. Believe this or not, the U.S. chamber of commerce is trying to spam this blog with their propaganda. (They hire people, paying peanuts to put corporate agenda comments in blogs).
So, the goal of EP is to not only analyze and get objective here, get into the details, but to also promote policies that are in the national interest, are based in economic realities and don't screw the U.S. middle class or the national interest.
The next leading economic index will increase because of the stock market. So, the impression will be that everything is fine. Dont' worry about regulating anything. Don't worry about the future because as long as the financial sector is strong America is strong. F*ck them!
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
To me, this is no surprise really. I saw AIG a couple of days ago valued @ 44, and now we have financials which are flush with U.S. taxpayer cash, propping them up, soaring on the market.
Does that track on any reality you know about?
Dow hits 10,000. Nothing to worry about. What a joke!
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Seems since at least the mid 90's, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup has been deciding whatever is in the best interests of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup is what is in the best interests of the nation.
Did you see that reversal on the modest tax code changes?
That was out of Treasury and here we go....can't get a damn thing changed if it's not endorsed and approved by MNCs.
A global financial meltdown bringing the entire world to the bring of ruin, wiping out middle class families losing their homes, their jobs, their savings...
and...it's pretty clear with their lobbyists and corrupt Congress, we get nowhere.
When the Fed said they were going to do something, well, we'll see, usually their are "king financial oligarchy" but to me that shows also just how bad it is....because the Fed can do end runs on U.S. government.
assuredly lends itself to hopefully someone with a real good technique with graphics/photoshop.
I have all sorts of images now of what an Economic Volcano God looks like! Some sort of $$ eyeballs of fire with maybe a Cronos eating his young image.
I couldn't figure out that comment completely either so I shot for the issues I know exist, but just for start-ups.
You'll bypass all of the CAPTCHA and can also more easily track your comments in the "my account section" which lists them and the replies.
Consider EP the "self help" of economic blogs. i.e. we're all grad students on this bus in a way. The point of EP is to give the peanut gallery a voice, for it's usually our pocketbooks that are getting picked.
On the initial unemployment claims vs. losses that difference (I think) is the people who file minus the people who just got a job. So, you can lose a job right, but you can also get a job.
So you are saying that after 30 years of massive deregulations and free trade agreements that all our problems are caused by not enough deregulations and free trade agreements?
Tell me something: what does the Volcano God look like?
I think most people do not get that the labor force is a subset of the total population and does "shrink" when people drop out of it, as well as "expands" when there is underground workforce in competition.
People see 10% or whatever and think that's some static #, which is based on some sort of static U.S. total pop....
when it's not, there is a whole series of criteria who is counted in the workforce and that skews the numbers.
They count foreign guest workers in the employment rate yet as far as I know do not count them in the total U.S. work force, which deflates the real unemployment rate for U.S. workers. Where this is prevalent is in tech jobs.
We do NOT have Free Trade. What we have is Lopsided Slanted Stacked Trade.
Per Paul Craig Roberts:
"Labor arbitrage is not trade and does not meet the Ricardian conditions for comparative advantage upon which the case for free trade is based."
"Few economists have bothered to think about the issue of offshoring, preferring to dismiss concerns about it as manifestations of the old protectionist fallacy. They learned in graduate school that free trade is always mutually beneficial and ceased to think when they passed their exams. This is especially true of "free market economists" who believe that economic freedom, which they identify with the freedom of capital, is always good. Thus, most economists mistakenly believe that offshoring is protected under the authority of free trade doctrine.
However, free trade doctrine is based on the assumption that domestic capital seeks its comparative advantage in its home economy, specializing where its comparative advantage is best and, thereby, increasing the general welfare in the home economy. David Ricardo, who explicated the case for free trade, rules out an economy's capital seeking absolute advantage abroad instead of comparative advantage at home."
Small Business & Jobs as well as create an account and join in.
I'm talking about unleashing the entrepreneurs, although I'll disagree with you on people. They are tons of people out there and maybe one might have to do a little training, ramp up time, but they are fully capable, hard working, dedicated and they need opportunities.
But that's why this post isn't talking about that side of the EQ, because the "other blogger" that being me, just wrote about one idea.
It's the money side as well as the killer of competition side (nice point, this is really true, esp. with IP wars), it's so skewed towards those "with lobbyists" the little guy often doesn't have a prayer unless acquired.
Good example is how the SBA continually awards big MNCs "small business" contracts, yet the little guy simply doesn't have the time/resources to navigate through that maze of bureaucracy to even figure out how to bid on some of those government contracts and if they do bid...uh, how to get paid if they manage to even swim through all of the requirements, paper work.
That's just on one side. VCs want a huge chunk of a business, which is ok, but ya know, not everybody is even at the point of getting to a VC and only certain types of businesses, i.e. startups would they be interested in...
so those little Mom&Pop operations aren't going to get any funds from a VC of course and even when it comes to smaller market share manufacturing, or services, a VC wouldn't be interested in it...
As far as I know there is no "Angel investor" pool out there for those smaller businesses to get off the ground.
But fundamentally I agree with you, we need a MAJOR job creation engine at this point and that's new ventures, so we not only need a good old fashioned jobs program, infrastructure, we need to kick start new businesses.
So, anyone who wants to help out to discuss ideas, some of the problem details in this area, come add your insights...
I see in the statistics they scour the Internets looking for any info at all..
so putting up some technical charts for them, they would love it.
Myself, what you're saying is pretty much what I did. I went for March 2010 options and I have a limit order for when they correct, so I didn't just buy them, I'm looking for that correction dip, assuming it will happen in the next couple of months. But I didn't do a technical chart to figure out the exact price. I guess I should do that instead of sticking my thumb in the air and guessing on the price bottom!
There are all sorts of new businesses and jobs that are impractical because we don't have enough people and/or we don't have enough money. If the entrepreneurs are fully unleashed, you get a lot of new businesses, new jobs absorbing the displaced. But the incumbent firms who would get plowed under by more nimble competitors seek to capture regulatory bodies and pass laws that are a light burden for big firms but killers for their small and medium sized competitors.
It's only the combination of globalization and entrepreneurship killing taxes and regulation that lead us to our current problems. The wealth you make by new companies and new jobs being created is worth the price you pay by opening us up to everybody else's entrepreneurs in my opinion. But ignoring the job creation parts and what we're doing to kill off those new jobs is a problem in this essay.
Right now the short-term technicals for gold and the dollar are at extremes. They point towards an imminent rally in the dollar and drop in gold.
However, the fundamentals, including seasonal factors, are very strong for gold.
If I was to make a guess I would say the coming correction in gold will be mild.
Last night I put in some call options on GLD. So, it's not like I'm not that convinced, although the speculation bets on all things related to physical gold are at an all time high.
;)
"World leaders are acting on threats to dump the dollar while the Obama administration shows a willingness to tolerate a weaker currency in an effort to boost exports......"
What a joke! I love it when the US can't control the fall of its currency so they claim it will help exports. My respnse..."What exports?"
The US exported its manufacturing base since the Reagan years and now has nothing or close to nothing to export. Presently there are only 11 million people in the US out of 300 million who work in manufacturing. The lowest it has ever been.
Maybe if the US had changed to the metric system in the '70s when everyone else in the English speaking world did, they might have industries producing goods the world's people want to buy. Instead they forced American companies to export the job base so they can sell products in the metric world.
Poverty is a terrible price to pay in order to cling to obsolete measurements and standards.
WOW!
What an answer! This is like going to graduate school. Thank you.
I was especially interested in the comparison between the bar chart PAYEMS and the line chart PAYEMS. Recently, I wrote a comment in Bonddad noting that on his stock charts there is no such thing a ‘a’ (single) trend line. Sometimes he has so many trend, base, support, etc. lines that it’s hard to read the raw data. And, that’s what I always appreciated about his analysis – its complexity; not over simplified.
Yet, for some reason on the ‘Green Shoots’ charts there is only one line and always from the trough. Your bar/line chart comparison vividly demonstrates the old saying: “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.”
At the risk of overstaying my welcome (teacher): I still am not clear about what the difference is between “Job Loses” and “First Time Unemployed”. As I understand it, recent Job Loses are in the range of about 250,000 in September. But, First Time Unemployment is in the range of 540,000. What exactly does “job loses” measure?
If you have the time and are of the mind – if not, thank you anyway for your detailed response.
Tom
Of course not. If you were then you wouldn't be allowed into the Church of the Volcano God and never be taken seriously in the investment community.
Let's put this another way:
Let's say instead of finding this asset on the periodic table, it was a creation of alchemists on Wall Street.
Somehow they had found a way to make a product that had zero chance of default and had zero risk from currency fluctuations.
This Wall Street product went up every single year and was the top performing investment of the decade.
Even more importantly, it's demand kept increasing as its customer base expanded, while at the same time its supply kept decreasing.
Given all that, do you think for a second that this wouldn't be the hottest product on the market? There would be ad men pitching this product on CNBC around the clock. It would be the main topic of conversation at cocktail parties. Your broker would tell you that you HAD to have some of this in your portfolio.
The problem is that this ISN'T a product of Wall Street. It's a product of nature. And for that reason, and that reason alone, you can't believe in it and still be allowed into the investment club. It would anger the Volcano God.
gives a lot of clarity on the state of the dollar and frankly, makes me think I've been wrong. I have been thinking this is a bunch of "brew ha ha" due to foreign debt holdings.
Seeing all of the recent events together in one piece, well, this is looking bad for dollar hegemony.
On gold, I'm not so convinced, unless I'm wrong and somehow gold is still linked to some currencies in the world.
(although I am in the "it's going to $2k an ounce camp regardless")
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